Curling up next to the fire with a glass of Malbec, a calculator, and copies of Elle and Vogue, Times fashion writer Eric Wilson delved into the underbelly of "price upon request," that obnoxious line that comes after a designer credit in a fashion glossy, which normally signals that you, a mere mortal, cannot afford the lavish item for which they will not reveal its cost. Except actually, that's completely inaccurate. "Price upon request," while sometimes a designer-requested stand-in for an inflated price, is actually most often used when a magazine simply cannot find out how much the dress, bracelet, or shoes they're featuring actually costs.
How come? Because right after designers unveil their runway collections, magazine editors request those garments to be shot for upcoming issues. Those issues are closed months in advance, well before the designer completes orders with stores on individual garments, and thus, they haven't priced the item yet, which means when the magazine asks for its price, it receives no answer. So the magazine goes ahead and prints "price upon request," and directs readers to call a store (like Barney's or Saks) for the information, after the designer tells the magazine that is where they should expect the garment to be on sale. But what happens when too few stores buy an item? The designer might choose not to even produce it, letting it live and die on the runway. This means the magazine shot and printed that frilly dress, praising it in front of their readers, and the designer never actually made it, which leads to angry readers with maxed out credit cards struggling to buy a garment that doesn't exist.
And this has always been standard in the industry.
You would think Wilson, with his meticulous counting and notation ("price upon request" appeared "104 [times] in the October issue of Elle") would know that. Or that because Wilson is the Times fashion scribe who's been penning away from the newspaper for a handful of years, and before that enjoyed stints at such fashion-y places like Women's Wear Daily. CONTINUED »
Know what you get when you spot isolated instances of various television personalities wearing a tie of a certain color? A Times trend story! Eric Wilson spotted folks like Brian Williams, Keith Olbermann, and Bill O'Reilly all wearing ties of a purplish hue in recent weeks, which is apparently their way of announcing they're staying neutral in this heated political climate, where, duh!, wearing a red tie is an obvious sign you're in McCain's camp and wearing a blue tie is the equivalent of licking Obama's feet.
So certain of this trend, Wilson even hooked semi-respectable people into his charade, getting GQ creative director Jim Moore to declare, "Purple is the new neutral," and Bergdorf Goodman's men's fashion director Tommy Fazio to insist, "There are other ways of not being partisan.”
We've seen pure coincidences manufactured into trends before, but OMG, this is ridiculous. Here's why: CONTINUED »
We're not even going to make fun of the much too much recycled "skinny jeans are back" theme. Actually, we might have to stop making fun of Eric Wilson all together. He seems kind of depressed or something.
After a day or two of wearing size 32 Tsubis (with stretch), I began to notice double takes from people on the street and started to feel like a pervert. The jeans stirred up body issues I never knew I had. By Friday I considered the possibility that I had become fat. To hide myself, I wore a boxy jacket and claimed it was part of the 80's trend.
Oh, honey. A boxy jacket is never the cure. If you have fallen prey to the doucheness of rocking this ridiculous look, the only thing that can help is a lot of Jim Bean … and maybe a sock.
A New Size for Denim: Extra Tight [Eric Wilson, New York Times]
There are so many ways to describe consumption porn, yet it takes so few words.
While the New Repbulic spewed roughly 4,000 on Alex Kuczynski and her weekly proverbs (leaving out the one where she begged us to call her crazy) one small statement from the Thursday Styles god Bertram Gabriel (aka "Trip") should have sufficed.
"I think people who whack it aren't comfortable with this new area of journalism about some of our tastes and consumption habits."
Sorry, Alex. But people who whack it just don't do it while thinking of you. Don't feel bad, though. We don't think they whack it to Eric Wilson, either.
The Gray Lady Wears Prada [Michelle Cottle, The New Republic]
A Cargo consultation is not complete without the Sunday Styles section weighing in. Eric Wilson takes a break from covering Brokeback trends and beards to cover the recently defunct men's style staple.
What pissed people off about Cargo anyway? Not that it was "gay" but that it was so in the closet about it? Not that they were treating their readers like wimpy girly men, but they stopped short of putting unicorns and rainbows on the stickers? Likely a little bit of both. But, of course it isn't the reader's fault. Their weak minds are just controlled by the monster which is media.
Which is exactly, of course, who EIC Ariel Foxman blames. The media, who just can't wrap their minds around straight men shopping and getting manicures, took Cargo down one preconceived notion at a time.
Cargo covered cars and technology with the same zeal as styling paste and printed underwear, and this, Mr. Foxman believes, made some people uncomfortable.
"It really irked people in the media that they couldn't put a label on Cargo," he said, "as if all technology or geeky magazines had to be straight and all fashion magazines had to be gay, which is a preposterous way for media to look at other media."
Ok, so maybe the media does enforce that stereotype. But when the only straight guys in your office work in the IT department, it's just so hard not to.
O.K., Fellas, Let's Shop. Fellas? Fellas? [Eric Wilson, New York Times]
Oh, we should have known better. Once again, the Thursday Styles folks are recycling their stories.
Or at least they're burying the "this trend started a year ago" disclaimer in the middle of the article, and following up by saying the same thing that was said in the same column a year ago. From the April 28, 2005 Thursday Styles page:
On the downtown streets of New York, in the hipster hangouts of Los Angeles and on college campuses in between, the young and style-conscious are affecting a look that until recently could not claim to be either
Just a reminder, today's read something like:
It's a sign of the times," Mr. Martin said. "People are into beards right now." At hipster hangouts and within fashion circles, the bearded revolution that began with raffishly trimmed whiskers a year or more ago has evolved into full-fledged Benjamin Harrisons.
Apparently the trend is especially popular among advertising execs at music mags and the staff of Cargo. The April 28 article uses Cargo's style director Bruce Pask and Spin's advertising director Carl Kiesel as sources. Today, they quote Vice's advertising director John Martin and Cargo's EIC Ariel Foxman. Oh, yeah, and Bruce Pask again.
The bearded celebs in April were Luke Wilson and Matthew Mcconaughey, today, they are George Clooney and Hugo Weaving.
The only major difference was that today's article used the word "bushy" a lot more than last year's. Oh, yeah, and somehow they tried to replace the "punk" aspect with the appeal of looking like a lumberjack. We bet next year, the cowboys will get beards.
Shaggy Chic: The Call of the Semi-Wild [David Coleman, New York Times]
Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol [Eric Wilson, New York Times]
It's on the runways, celebs are sporting it, and even mag editors like Ariel Foxman are all about it. The look, says the New York Times, is beards. And while Eric Wilson tries to look for deeper meaning, he eventually shoots down any attempt to explain the psychology behind these "bushy" chins.
This one from top Tuleh designer Bryan Bradley, however, is not too scruffy.
"This is some sort of reaction to men who look scrubbed, shaved, plucked and waxed," said the designer Bryan Bradley, who stepped onto the runway after his Tuleh presentation looking like a renegade from the John Bartlett show, at which more than half the models wore beards: untidy ones that scaled a spectrum from wiry to ratty to shabby to fully bushy.
"It's less 'little boy,' " Mr. Bradley said. "For a while men have looked too much like Boy Scouts going off to day camp."
Ah, yes. Pedophilia is in the eye of the beholder. Actually, what's more shocking, is that for the first time in weeks, Thursday Styles didn't chalk up a trend to Brokeback Mountain.
Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol [Eric Wilson, New York Times]
Editorial Director
